


Endgame

by shirleyholmes



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Bloodplay, Canonical Character Death, Dom/sub, Dysfunctional Relationships, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Non-Explicit, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Sebastian Moran, Post Reichenbach, Pre Reichenbach, Sexual Content, Sherlock Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirleyholmes/pseuds/shirleyholmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning is crisp and cool and Jim whispers a secret into his ear, the words falling from dead, dry lips. </p><p>Sebastian grabs his rifle and waits.</p><p>And then he hears the gunshot.</p><p>Because even in the end, Jim couldn’t be arsed to give him half a warning</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endgame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sureimsherlock (missabigailhobbs)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missabigailhobbs/gifts).



> Sherlock Secret Santa: A angsty little piece for sureimsherlock, who thinks this fandom suffers from a dearth of MorMor fanfic (she's probably right).
> 
> The warnings are more to be on the safe side: I tried to keep anything graphic out of the writing. My first time with MorMor (and this style of writing, to be honest) so please let me know how it goes!
> 
> Note: An endgame is just chess jargon for the ending scenario of a game, usually the last few moves.

“Tell me Seb: would you die for me?” Jim rolls over on their bed and gazes at him disinterestedly. As if he has nothing invested in the outcome of this question. Perhaps he doesn’t, because his eyes are already there. 

Dead eyes. 

But there is only one answer. 

“Of course.”

“Obey me in everything?” Jim’s pushing, pushing for something and it makes Sebastian uneasy, because when Jim pushes, you never know quite where you stand. 

“Seems to me I don’t really have a choice there, boss.” He tries for gruff, but Jim grabs him by the collar, running one long finger down his scarred cheek. 

“Oh, but you do. Everybody has a choice, Sebby. You could run.” There’s an innocent offering in the words. Jim could be asking him if he’d like tea or toast, instead of his freedom. 

“Yeah. And you’d find me.” And I could hide, he thinks. He doesn’t know if he’d manage it, really, but the point is he could try and either Jim would find him or he wouldn’t but they both know it means something that Seb has never made the attempt. 

“Clever pet. You could kill yourself.” Seb doesn’t even flinch. Instead, he raises himself one elbow, looking down critically at Jim, at his wild eyes. 

Jim isn’t mad. But he isn’t quite sane either. 

“Kind of fond of life, to be honest,” he says, finally. Cautiously, because if Sebastian Moran is a sleek tiger, than Jim Moriarty is a rabi-ed wildcat and Seb has learnt the hard way which is more dangerous. 

Jim isn’t looking at him anymore. He’s pushing his index and middle fingers under Seb’s collar, trailing them along his neck until they rest, solidly, in the hollow next to his windpipe. 

His pulse. Jim is measuring his pulse, the utter bastard. Sebastian steals himself for the next question, knowing, without a doubt, that he’s not going to like it. Never show fear, he thinks. Jim can smell it.

Despite himself, he flinches at the next words that come out of those pouting lips.

“Do you love me, tiger?”

There’s a right answer and a wrong one and Seb hasn’t been trained for this, so he’s left to fight down his panic and search blindly for the one that Jim will accept. 

Of course, there’s a truthful answer too, but that’s not even up for consideration.

“Sure, boss. If you want me to.” The perfect response. The careful one, without attachment, conveying all the loyalty Seb has to give, but none of the sentiment that Jim so despises and, so, of course, being perfect, it goes to hell in about five seconds.

Jim grips him by the shoulders and rolls him over onto his back, leering grotesquely. He’s enjoying himself now and Seb could push him off easily, but he doesn’t, because that isn’t how this works. 

“Ah-uh. Avoiding the question are we?” He asks in a sing-song voice. As if Seb’s a doll or a baby.

“No, sir.”

Nope, wrong. Definitely a fucking marionette at this point.

“I asked you a question, pet, and you will answer me.” Jim’s palms flatten over over his thin t-shirt and rub soothingly. 

“Um, sure.” 

Slick. Fantastically done. 

“Sure?”

Not what he meant to convey. But there’s the truthful answer, hanging in front of him, and it’s too easy. 

“Yes.”

He glares straight back at Jim. This is uncharted territory and it’s unfair of Jim to take them here but Jim simply twists his fingers into the pajama shirt and hisses.

“Good then.” 

And then, just like that, he vaults over the side of the bed and leaves.

Business as usual.

…............................

Sebastian loves chess.

It surprises people, usually. That Seb is the one who plays, not Jim. He’s not a grandmaster or anything, hardly, but there’s something soothing about the strict rules. There are no uncontrolled variables except for the wizard at the other side, no surprises that can’t be figured out in advance and Jim hates that, but it’s perfect for Seb. 

Because chess is war of a sort and, for Sebastian, war is something he never has the luxury to escape. 

And it’s the only war in which he’s not a piece himself. 

…..............

“Do me one favor, tiger.”

“Yes.”

“Shoot me.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I thought you said you’d obey me in everything?”

….................  
Seb tried to teach Jim chess once. 

Jim laughed and told him that it was game better played with real people. Of course Jim was wrong. He doesn’t play chess with real people. Because chess has rules.

And Jim breaks every one of them, because rules are boring and not worth his time. 

Truth be told, very little is.  
….............

 

It’s all Jim can talk about now.

“Sherlock. SHERLOCK.” He chants the name like a blasphemous prayer and it’s obsession, pure and simple, but there’s a light in his little black eyes that wasn’t there. 

They’re not dead eyes anymore, they’re sick, twisted eyes, hateful and scheming. 

Seb thinks that Jim has never looked quite so mad as he does these days.

There’s a part of him (and maybe it’s the sick, twisted part) that wouldn’t have Jim any other way.

…...........................

There’s also the sane part, the one that wants to know desperately where this is going. 

It’s not jealousy. Some might say it is, but Seb has always known that he’s not Jim’s equal. He’s always known that he’s a tool, a piece, the queen maybe, but then again, pieces can be promoted and so anyone could be a queen. Even a pet, like him.

But not everyone can be a king.

Maybe all Jim was waiting for was a worthy opponent.  
…..............

Jim is bored and Jim is cruel and there are days when Seb stands naked in front of the mirror and realizes that most of his scars are not from the war. He wonders, briefly, if Doctor Watson has scars. He wonders where they come from and he wonders if the good doctor, the meek little doctor who was once a soldier, knows that there is love that ought not to be given. 

Love that can tear you apart and burn the pieces. Love that cannot heal but only destroy.

A special kind of hell with a special kind of love.

…................

Sebastian was 12 when he learned to play. Sometime after his mother died and his father drank himself into a stupor, typical story of a broken house, nothing new, no, not here. 

He’d wander the streets, skip school and play with one of the old men on the streets, a bit of money to play and you kept it if you won. They’d smoke amiably afterwards, dragging on cheap cigarettes, until the day the man tried to pickpocket him and Seb snapped his wrist.

Didn’t matter so much. He almost always won by then. 

He liked the old man. But in those days, he thought that people couldn’t be allowed to walk all over you, because the world was a harsh place and people were not be trusted.

…..................

Seb doesn’t trust Jim. 

But in the end it doesn’t matter, because Seb doesn’t need to trust that Jim will take care of him or that he won’t hurt him. No, all that Seb requires from him is that he keeps on being Jim. 

He’s changed his opinion on being walked all over. He wouldn’t do that for just anyone, but Jim is different and Seb isn’t really worth all that much anymore.

Besides, Jim needs him too.

…......................

“Are you watching me sleep, Sebby?”

“You asked me to guard, I’m doing it.”

“Oh, touchy are we?” 

“I’ll just leave then.”

“No, stay.”

“If you don’t want me---”

“I fucking told you to stay, didn’t I?”

…...............................

If Jim loves anything, it’s the game. 

Maybe it’s Sherlock.

But even that is beginning to bore him.

He’s trying to end the game too fast, escalate it too quickly, and even Sebastian can see that he’s becoming careless. He’s underestimating people time and time again and then Seb has to take care of them, quietly, and it’s a damned waste. Seb doesn’t care about the lives, but pieces are pieces, tools are tools and sacrificing them without reason is just foolish. 

But Jim never cares how many pieces he loses or even if he’s winning. 

All Jim needs is the distraction.  
….............

Seb supposes it would bother most people, really, that they don’t know if their significant other gives half a fuck.

It seems kind of a cute thing to be bothered about, to him. As if it matters, when the end result is sex and sometimes pain anyways. When the people who wonder that are always the people who’ll never leave to begin with, because they’re already insecure enough to start defining themselves by another’s love.

Sebastian could tell them a thing or two, if he honestly gave a flying fuck about their lives. 

He could tell them that love is never equal and that it’s always going to hurt and that there are things that are far, far worse than waking up next to a warm body. That there are addictions worse than adrenaline and other people’s fear. 

That human lives are truly insignificant: one shot and poof, they’re gone and he’s fairly damn sure that that’s the end of that and so, if one’s life is so insignificant, than how much more so is the emotion attached to it? 

People would stare at him, horrified, if they heard his opinions. But no one asks him anyways and he wouldn’t answer if they did.

After all, these people don’t know Sebastian Moran.

And they certainly don’t know Jim Moriarty. 

…............................

 

“Seb, I’ve got a girlfriend.”

“Very good, boss.” Neutral expression. Jim is gleeful and, if he felt anything, Seb would probably feel a flash of pity for the girl.

Seb, however, feels nothing. 

“She’s very pretty you know.” Jim dances in front of him and his clothing is decidedly odd: grey sweats and denim. He takes a picture out of his back pocket and shoves it in Seb’s face. 

A tiny pinprick of something that might be annoyance.

“Sebby, you’re not /looking/” There’s a threat woven in with the petulance and Seb looks down and yes, she is pretty, a mousy sort of pretty, and Jim is wearing bright green underwear.

A little more than annoyance this time. 

Jim catches his gaze and coyly turns. “You like them? Special for the occasion. I’m sure Sherlock will notice, after all...”

It’s very clear what Jim is trying to do and it’s not jealousy that finally cracks Sebastian, but rather the insinuation that something as petty as Jim’s overt flirting could matter to him. Before he knows quite what he’s doing, his hands are curled into the front of Moriarty’s thin cotton shirt and he’s determined to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off of Jim’s face. 

“Listen, you little cunt,” he snarls and shit, is Seb going to be in trouble for this, but the white hot edge of his anger blurs all the consequences.

“You can go play your pathetic games with someone else. I am your fucking body guard and you can stop trying to make me into a whimpering girlfriend, because I am nothing, nothing to you and you are nothing to me, do you fucking understand?!” 

He’s breathing heavily, right into Jim’s face. Jim’s grin wavers, falls and then fixes itself back on.

“Oh no, does the big pussycat bite? ” he cooes. There must be malice there, true anger, but Seb doesn’t see it, because that’s right when he tosses Jim on the floor like a rag doll, his mouth a wide O of surprise, and storms away, slamming the door on the way out.

Because if he’s going to die for this, might as well make it good. 

…...................

Seb doesn’t die for it. Jim doesn’t mention it again, though he fucks him viciously that night, but then, that’s all per the usual.

And if Jim’s a bit clingier in the morning, Seb doesn’t comment on that either.

These things come and go. 

…...............  
It takes a while, but he figures it out, at the pool, as he decorates the temple of yet another distraction in little red lights. 

John Watson loves Sherlock. 

He’d die for him.

You can’t lose the king, it’s the most important piece. 

The queen, however, is powerful, but not vital.

Unless it’s an endgame. And then you need a queen if the other side has one, you need one piece that would destroy the board before the king is harmed. Because it’s simply too easy to back a lone king into a corner. 

That’s chess.

And this.

This is an endgame.  
…............

Seb hears him come in, because that’s Seb’s job, but he continues to pretend he’s asleep. Still playing the game. 

The soft snick of an opening blade next to his ear. And Jim knows that Seb knows that Jim knows he’s awake, but he also knows that Seb won’t move. He doesn’t even tense up his muscles, because Jim will do what he wants to anyways and tense muscles would probably just be more painful. Which is fine, at any rate, he’s not afraid of it, but best not to disrupt the few seconds of peace here.

There’s a weight that settles in the curve of his back and the blade runs under his shirt collar, the material slicing open without fanfare. Seb can feel the cold flat of the blade between his shoulder bones, across his neck.

“Going to kill me, Jim?” he asks lazily. He’s a bit tired of all of this, he thinks. And there’s a point at which you run with a psychopath and accept, whether you realize it or not, that said psychopath will probably end up being the death of you.

The means is not important.

Jim doesn’t speak. He cuts deep lines into the skin and muscle of Seb’s back and he can feel a pattern, words and he doesn’t know what they say, but he knows they’ll scar. Jim presses a kiss to the wound when he’s done. And then he turns Seb’s head and kisses his lips too, and there’s metal and blood and death.

….........

The wound heals. Seb doesn’t bother looking at it, because he can guess, really, what Jim’s written.  
…...................

Irene is slinky and brutally pretty and Seb doesn’t much give a damn, though he breaks her riding crop when she tries to play with him.

Only Jim is allowed to do that.

Her plan goes to shit, because it’s a fucking stupid plan, but that’s not really what it’s about. Jim is shuffling his pieces across the board because he can and the point is very simple and very clearly directed at one Sherlock Holmes:

/You’re not the grandmaster here/, it says.

/You’re just a piece on my chessboard. Just like Irene, just like Mycroft./ 

/You’re an ordinary piece./  
….....................

Jim insists he has to be captured. That it’s perfectly safe (as if he’d give a damn) and it’s perfectly necessary (as if anyone could convince him otherwise). In reality, he’s bored again and the gleam in his eyes is maniacal. Seb tries to convince him out of it anyways, and earns himself a sharp slap against the cheek.

It’s more humiliating than anything else, which is probably what Jim was going for in the first place. 

“You’re not a piece,” Sebastian tells him. 

Jim laughs coldly. “Oh, tiger. You and your quaint little board games. Is it nice, having a metaphor for everything?”

But chess isn’t a boardgame, Sebastian thinks. It’s war. 

And then, they’re all pieces of a sort anyways.

“You’re not a piece that can be sacrificed at any rate,” he continues, blindly, doggedly. “You’re the king: the black king and Sherlock’s the white: you can’t put yourself in a vulnerable position or else the game’s over.”

And then Jim slaps him. “Checkmate,” he snaps. And that’s not right, it doesn’t even make any sense and Seb is just angry enough to walk away.

Which might have been the master plan all along, because that’s the point at which Sebastian begins letting go.  
….........................

Ms. Adler is gone and Sebastian suspects she’s not dead, but, if he knows that, then Jim definitely does. Either way, her purpose has been served.

Jim is quieter now, deader. Sherlock has disappointed him, he says dully. The one sparkling gem in his treasure chest lied to him: it is coal after all, because even polished coal is still worthless.

Sebastian gets a thrill of pleasure from the demotion of Sherlock. He also gets a thrill of pleasure from a needy Jim, but he keeps both to himself.

…...........

Except Jim is not needy. Jim is ice that never melts and hard diamond that can crush glass. He stops coming to bed and he stops eating and Sebastian, if he was superstitious (which he is a bit, but not enough for it to make a pussy out of him), would think Jim was possessed.

Except Jim can’t be possessed, because he’s far more likely to be the devil himself. Somehow, the thought is soothing. When you sleep with the devil, surely that is the worst you’ll ever have to endure?

That’s not quite true and Sebastian knows it. A secret fear gnaws at him and he stretches his arm around, as if he could feel the scars on his back, but, of course, he can’t reach them.

They comfort him anyways.

…...............................

The morning is crisp and cool and Jim whispers a secret into his ear, the words falling from dead, dry lips. 

Sebastian grabs his rifle and waits.

And then he hears the gunshot.

Because even in the end, Jim couldn’t be arsed to give him half a warning.

…...............

Doctor Watson’s head is fragile in his target. One slip of the finger and he could end it anyways.

Who would know?

Who would care?

He and the doctor are nothing.

Two geniuses lost to the world. That’s something. A damned shame of a sort, but well, how else was it going to end?

He’d told him. He told the fucking bastard that he was cornered, but Moriarty always had to have a draw, didn’t he? Couldn’t accept defeat like anyone else.

Seb could shoot. But Watson, that pathetic excuse of a soldier, crumples on the pavement and he decides to leave it. 

Even he knows that living with that kind of misery has to be far worse than death.

…...............

Later he traces the words carved into his shoulder.

He’d known then, that it was over. 

Because there was no point, was there, to claiming him if Jim was going to be alive to keep a check on his property?

No. To leave a note that he would carry to the end of his days, a perpetual reminder. Not love, no. A legacy, one that ensured that Sebastian would have to be his, even after death.

He’s never seen the scars, never bothered, but now he turns in front of the mirror and looks at the spiky letters, the words that cause his eyes to grow damp with memories, because Jim had known, the bastard had--

He’d always known that he was going to leave Sebastian behind.  
…......................

Sebastian never bothers with another master, not after ‘the incident’. Nor has he disappeared, despite the money and his new-found freedom. Maybe loyalty digs deeper than that or maybe, after all these years imprisoned, he can’t walk out of his cage even with the door open. 

Stockholm Syndrome. To a dead man. 

Doesn’t really bother him.

But with Jim gone, the criminal elements have gone underground. Watching, waiting: some are petty and run, bits crumble, but the core is still there. And Sebastian watches them lazily, because really, what else does he have to do?

They don’t need him, not for the longest time or they think they don’t.

And then, quite suddenly, they do.

People begin dying, apparently randomly, 3 months after the fall. There’s always an explanation to be had, no evidence of foul play, but another month in and Sebastian himself knocks at a grotty door and offers his services.

Because Seb isn’t stupid, no matter what anyone thinks.

…........................

It’s been 8 months and John Watson still lives at 221B Baker Street. He almost never leaves. Seb walks by: not often, but probably more than is strictly necessary

He doesn’t bother with a disguise, because John Watson is not worth it. 

John Watson is normal, not special and so there is nothing, nothing about him that can be hated. Disliked, possibly, yes, but hatred is too strong of an emotion for him.

Seb hates him anyways. He hates him for taking time to mourn and for drinking tea, while the war rages around him. He wonders if John did that in Afghanistan and maybe he did, because he’s a doctor at heart, not a soldier, and somewhere, somehow, it’s made him weak. 

And then there’s this:

Whether or not he knows it, John Watson was loved.

Because, at the end of the day, Sherlock sacrificed the game for him. And Jim never, ever, even considered doing that for Seb.  
….....................

The scars will never fade. Jagged, messy lettering that twists behind his left shoulder, the shakiness giving added depth to the words themselves.

/I’m sorry, tiger/  
…..............

It’s been one year and the mysterious deaths have gone unexplained. Every time Sebastian thinks he’s beginning to unravel it, that, this time, he’s found the right piece of evidence, interrogated the right person, it slips away from him.

Like chasing shadows, he thinks. Him and John Watson both.

…..........................

Fading yellow paint curls off of brick walls. In back alleys and across telephone poles, on shirts and shop fronts and online.

/I believe in Sherlock Holmes./

/Moriarty was real./

As if the second is a validation of the first. As if the reality of Jim makes Sherlock more of a hero. Sebastian is glad, in truth, that the thin veneer of Jim’s fairy-tale reality is crumbling. He doesn’t think the greatest man who ever lived ought to be remembered as anything less than what he was. Brilliant, arrogant, ruthless.

Jim Moriarty deserves that at least. 

…........

It’s been 2 years and Sebastian wonders when he started tracking time by the moment of Jim’s death.  
…........

3 years, 4 months and 18 days later, Sebastian finds himself in a certain flat, one he knows intimately, though only through the lens of a small spy camera. Abandoned now, all of it, grimy with lack of care and stripped of everything. No furniture either, save a moldy old sofa and a coffee table, which holds the only object of interest left in 221B Baker Street. An unassuming packet, wrapped in newspaper, one that he found waiting for him when he broke through the door.

Another futile day, but there’s a suspicion nagging at him, has been for days, which is why he's here to begin with. And now this parcel, waiting for no one, bright and new against the dirty flat. It's for him. He knows it is. 

Seb rips open the slim packet with his knife and a single chess piece falls onto his lap. 

Jim would have liked it: suitably dramatic. Seb doesn’t care for such things, but he recognizes it for what it is: A taunt, an invitation, a threat. 

The white king. 

Sebastian allows himself a grim smile as he picks up his rifle and prepares to head back out into the night.

It’s been a long time since he’s played chess.  
...............

**Author's Note:**

> Crit and comments, please?? Also, the words on Seb's back were unashamedly borrowed from this post: http://sherli-holmes.tumblr.com/post/36602749768/gini-baggins-some-made-me-cry-others-cracked


End file.
